Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> What this tells me is that the program wrote some data to memory and 
> then read it back, and it wasn't the same. This indicates a fault with 
> either the RAM itself, the motherboard, the CPU cache, or just some kind 
> of obscure CPU fault that makes it execute instructions wrong.

  When your PC starts misbehaving clearly due to some hardware failure,
the very first thing you do is check the PSU. If possible, try changing
it to another one which is known to work (and has enough wattage to run
your PC). Only then, if the problems persist, should you test other things.

  In my experience 90% of PC hardware failures are caused by a failing PSU.
The symptoms can be extremely varied, all the way from the diverse BIOS test
failing (such as the CPU or RAM tests) to random crashes and reboots, as well
as the booting process failing seeminlgy due to some disk error.

  If your PSU is failing, hardware tests (performed by BIOS or third-party
software) are completely unreliable and tell you absolutely nothing. Often
replacing the faulty PSU is enough to solve all the problems.

  (There might be a few cases where the faulty PSU actually damaged some
other hardware in the process due to its builtin failsafes breaking. This
can be extremely confusing because neither replacing the PSU only or the
other hardware only will solve the problems, and it can be difficult to
diagnose that you need to replace *both*.)

  Yes, I do have experience on this.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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